The first bits of chill are in the air—and that means the Fall Previews are flying in! Read Local BC is delighted to present our own top recommendations for your reading lists, with books best enjoyed in view of your favourite deciduous tree, hot beverage in hand.
Fortune Knox Once: More Musings from the Edge by Jack Knox (Heritage House)
From the publisher: For more than twenty-five years, Jack Knox’s weekly humour column has captured the essence of life in BC’s picturesque capital city, a.k.a. Dysfunction-by-the-Sea. In Fortune Knox Once, as in his previous humour collections, Knox gathers together his favourite Times Colonist pieces that best sum up the absurdity of our times.
Coming October 18, 2022!
Bloom Where You Are Planted: 50 Conversations with Inspiring British Columbians by Beka Shane Denter (Heritage House)
From the publisher: A celebration of fifty talented, creative, passionate people (forty-nine women and one nonbinary person) working in the fields of visual art, dance, photography, music, design, comedy, storytelling, food, fashion, beauty, wellness, and advocacy.
Out now!
Weird Rules to Follow by Kim Spencer (Orca Books)
From the publisher: In the 1980s, the coastal fishing town of Prince Rupert is booming. There is plenty of sockeye salmon in the nearby ocean, which means the fishermen are happy and there is plenty of work at the cannery. Eleven-year-old Mia and her best friend, Lara, have known each other since kindergarten. Like most tweens, they like to hang out and compare notes on their crushes and dream about their futures. But even though they both live in the same cul-de-sac, Mia’s life is very different from her non-Indigenous, middle-class neighbor.
Coming October 18, 2022!
My Sister’s Girlfriend by Gail Marlene Schwartz and Lucie Gagnon (Rebel Mountain Press)
“A heartwarming story to help children understand the coming-out process of those they love. My Sister’s Girlfriend is as much a story about a family coming out, as it is about a young girl opening up and learning to share a beloved family member with others.” —LS Stone, author of What’s in it for ME?
Coming October 15, 2022!
The Future Is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes and Mourning Songs by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (Arsenal Pulp Press)
From the publisher: Written over the course of two years of disabled isolation during the pandemic, this is a book of love letters to other disabled QTBIPOC (and those concerned about disability justice, the care crisis, and surviving the apocalypse); honour songs for kin who are gone; recipes for survival; questions and real talk about care, organizing, disabled families, and kin networks and communities; and wild brown disabled femme joy in the face of death.
Out now!
The Lost Century by Larissa Lai (Arsenal Pulp Press)
From the publisher: Lambda Literary Award winner Larissa Lai (The Tiger Flu) returns with a sprawling historical novel about war, colonialism, love, and loyalty during Japan’s occupation of Hong Kong in World War II.
Coming October 18, 2022!
The Sky and the Patio: An Ecology of Home by Don Gayton (New Star Books)
From the publisher: In 25 engaging essays, Summerland writer Don Gayton fuses the personal with the ecological to portray the geography and the natural and human history of his adopted Okanagan Valley homeland.
Coming October 13, 2022!
Guilty of Everything: 21st Anniversary Edition by John Armstrong (New Star Books)
“Think Hunter S. Thompson meets Hemingway in Vancouver, and goes on a musical bender. Delicious.” — Erica Leiren, Discorder Magazine
“Armstrong is a natural storyteller and vividly places the reader at a variety of seminal scenes…an entertaining and essential historical document of Canadian punk.” — Michael Barclay, exclaim.ca
Coming October 13, 2022!
Dancing in Small Spaces: One Couple’s Journey with Parkinson’s Disease and Lewy Body Dementia by Leslie A. Davidson (Touchwood Editions)
From the publisher: An unstintingly honest and surprisingly humorous memoir that charts a couple’s parallel diagnoses of Parkinson’s and Lewy body dementia. At once poignant and unflinchingly frank, Dancing in Small Spaces is the story of a long and adventurous marriage, of deep gratitude, and, ultimately, of writing one’s way toward understanding and acceptance.
Coming October 11, 2022!
EJ Hughes: Canadian War Artist by Robert Amos (Touchwood Editions)
“A penetrating study based on unique archival material and a deep analysis into hundreds of wartime works of art.” — Tim Cook, author of The Fight for History: 75 Years of Forgetting, Remembering, and Remaking of Canada’s Second World War
Out now!
Lights to Guide Me Home: A Journey Off the Beaten Track in Life, Love, Adventure, and Parenting by Meghan J. Ward (Rocky Mountain Books)
From the publisher: Meghan J. Ward was 21 years old when she journeyed across the country for a summer job in the Canadian Rockies. As an inexperienced hiker from the suburbs of the nation’s capital, she knew she was in for an adventure. But what she didn’t know was that her move to the mountains would result in a 90-degree turn towards a life she never expected.
Out now!
A Cabin Christmas by Glynnis Hood, illustrated by Ardis Cheng (Rocky Mountain Books)
Colourful and lively illustrations draw you into a touching tale about how a community of all shapes and sizes comes together, just in time for Christmas.
Out now!
All the Bears Sing: Stories by Harold Macy (Harbour Publishing)
From the publisher: Harold Macy’s story collection highlights the particular magic of the West Coast, reflecting on how we both shape—and are shaped by—the land we inhabit.
Coming October 11, 2022!
Workboats for the World: The Robert Allan Story by Robert G. Allan with Peter A. Robson (Harbour Publishing)
From the publisher: Along the West Coast waterfront and in ship-handling circles around the world, few names are more respected than that of Robert Allan Ltd., the marine architecture firm that has been based in Vancouver for nearly a century.
Coming November 26, 2022!
The Punishment by Joseph Dandurand (NightWood Editions)
From the publisher: The Punishment is the latest addition to the oeuvre of prolific Kwantlen writer Joseph Dandurand, whose stunning previous collection, The East Side of It All, was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize.
Out now!
The Rooftop Garden by Menaka Raman-Wilms (NightWood Editions)
From the publisher: The Rooftop Garden is a novel about Nabila, a researcher who studies seaweed in warming oceans, and her childhood friend Matthew. Now both in their twenties, Matthew has disappeared from his Toronto home, and Nabila travels to Berlin to find him and try to bring him back.
Coming October 15, 2022!
Rescue Me: Behind the Scenes of Search and Rescue by Cathalynn Labonté-Smith (Caitlin Press)
From the publisher: Rescue Me takes you behind the scenes of some of North America’s riskiest search and rescue operations. Author Cathalynn Labonté-Smith shares real-life stories as told by volunteer members of Search and Rescue teams, who find the lost and rescue the injured in the most extreme conditions and situations the wilds of North America throw at them.
Coming October 7, 2022!
Red Dust & Cicada Songs: A Memoir by Mary Bomford (Caitlin Press)
From the publisher: Writer and educator Mary Bomford describes the formative years of her life working as a teacher in Zambia, and the long-lasting impact those years imprinted upon her.
Coming October 14, 2022!
Derelict Bicycles by Dale Tracy (Anvil Press)
From the publisher: This first collection by Dale Tracy is the atmosphere that derelict bicycles breathe. Like weeds, ones we’ve built, they burgeon. These poems wonder what sort of a performance thinking is—they perform their own logical hysteria, that emotion that feels what the other emotions feel like.
Coming this month!
No Shelter by Henry Doyle (Anvil Press)
“The poems have a real immediacy and a storytelling quality not that often seen in contemporary poetry, although it used to be more common, reaching its plainspoken apex with Charles Bukowski. Doyle has more craft control (and more quality control) than Bukowski, but shares an exhaustion and an attitude that make the poems shine, even when they don’t want to shine.” — Jonathan Ball, Winnipeg Free Press
Coming this month!
The Alpha Female Wolf: The Fierce Legacy of Yellowstone’s 06 by Rick McIntyre (Greystone Books)
“Rick’s writing is so vivid, so powerful, that I feel I have been right there with him among the wolves of Yellowstone. And I urge you, the reader, to come with us and discover the magic of wolf society.” — DR. Jane Goodall, DBE, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute & UN Messenger of Peace
Coming October 25, 2022!
Car Crash: A Memoir of the Aftermath by Lech Blaine (Greystone Books)
From the publisher: This is a riveting account of family, friendship, grief, and love after tragedy. In a tight-knit community where class and sport dominate, and in a media landscape where car crashes compete with floods and pandemics for headlines, Lech shows that our connection with others is what propels us on. Heartbreaking and darkly hilarious, Car Crash is a story for our times.
Coming October 11, 2022!
A Man and His River: A 25-Year Love Affair with a River by DC Reid (Hancock House)
From the publisher: A Man and His River is a love story, and a story of personal journey set on the banks of the Nitinat river on Vancouver Island. It is about the inherent and universal feeling of being near flowing water and the experiences of nature and wildlife that share the banks. This book is also a summary of the author’s lifetime of fishing Vancouver Islands 123 watersheds and the pursuits of its diversity of salmon and trout.
Coming this fall!
Facing the Sweating Horse by Calvin White (Now or Never Publishing)
From the publisher: Facing the Sweating Horse is a collection of poems written from the perspective that the foundation of life is connection and, thus, the purpose of life is to recognize that connection. Our connectedness resides in how we share each moment, whether we notice that moment or not. ‘We’ means not only our fellow humans—all with the same bodies and emotions and dreams—but all of our fellow species, and the rocks and the water, the air and the light, that grace our finite days. Both lithe and wise, Facing the Sweating Horse is to face life in its most trembling, revealing form.
Coming October 15, 2022!
Gold, Grit, Guns: Miners on BC’s Fraser River in 1858 by Alexander Globe (Ronsdale Press)
From the publisher: Gold, Grit, Guns is the first detailed study of 1858 mining practices, miners’ costs and the grim reality of how mining culture compromised First Nations life. The book is richly researched with 115 rarely seen illustrations of life on the Fraser in 1858 and maps of the area.
Coming November 2022!
Power Played: A Critical Criminology of Sport edited by Derek Silva and Liam Kennedy (UBC Press)
From the publisher: This innovative collection convincingly argues that modern sport can be characterized by unequal and problematic power relations that are inextricably linked to issues of violence, harm, deviance, and punishment.
Out now!